Welp, Diamondbacks are terrible. That isn't to say they're weak units, but considering they cost 150/150 and 4 (!!!!) supply, I was expecting them to perform a lot better than they did. All they really managed to accomplish was completely drain my gas income. I also remember at one point early in the game being maxed out, even though I only had a handful of Diamondbacks and Hellions. For reference... 4 supply is as much as a Thor.

My suggestion for Diamondbacks:A) Lower their cost. 150/50 and 2 supply sounds fair to me. I would also get rid of the damage upgrade and let them have it for free.ORB) Improve their health and DPS significantly. If they can't be cheaper, they can at least be beefcakes.

If you're worried that the Attack-on-the-move ability will make them too powerful, it won't happen. Barring their campaign-only upgrades, Diamondbacks were designed specifically to have neither the range nor the movement speed to really exploit the ability.

As far as counters go, Diamondbacks are easy to beat. Dragoons outrange them, and I'm pretty sure they outrun them as well. It was actually rather sad; HighZealot's Dragoons were practically going one-to-one with my Diamondbacks, yet Dragoons are so much cheaper and easier to replace. Also, seeing how every game inevitably devolves into an air war, I have to wonder how hammered I was to even think of massing Diamondbacks.

Plus, with all the worry about Attack-on-the-move being too strong, it sure hasn't stopped you from slapping it onto the Combo/Elite units. In the event the ability does make a unit too powerful, that says more about the unit in question and not the ability itself. Some units are strong enough that they don't need any extra abilities or upgrades.

Then you have secret option C: Remove them from the game. To me, having every SC1/Campaign unit in the map needlessly clutters the interface, because many of them have such overlapping roles that everyone goes with the staple units anyway. Some of them are legit (e.g. Dragoons have practically replaced the Stalker), but most of them aren't.

Combo units. Not a bad idea, but I've yet to see a unit that truly constitutes a "combo", except for maybe the Bunker BC. Most units in the tree are exactly the same as the original unit, except they have a bunch of passive abilities and increased stats. When I think of a combo unit, I think of a Hellion that has the Goliath's missile attack for air, or a Corruptor with the Brood Lord's ground attack. I don't know whether you're trying to be conservative or not, but those are just some ideas that come to mind.

I also think it's kind of silly to have three tiers for each of these units. Big example here is the AA Hellion. It's the final iteration of the Combo Hellions, and I'm pretty sure it's the only one that ever sees use. Because these games last so long, the units leading up to it could only be used throughout relatively short time-span. Once the final tier is researched, those units won't ever be used again. That's bad, particularly when someone does sell them and then they become a permanently gray item on the menu. This goes in hand with what I said above about the SC1/Campaign units; if it's not being used, it's just cluttering the interface.

Then you have the Combo Marines, which never see use for a different reason. Their increased cost makes them rather prohibitive for what is supposed to be a basic unit. The regular Marine is easier for Warlords to make and easier for Merchants to sell. Simply put, the Marine is one of those units where quantity matters more than quality. Especially when quantity is more cost-effective.

The interface. Icons and the Next/Previous Page tabs are great additions, although there's a few other things you could do. Apparently there's upgrades to increase the starting energy of spellcaster units, and there's a display for its level on the merchant's menu, although it's really hard to notice. This, along with delivery times, should be made more visible to Warlords. If possible, I suggest placing it in the tooltips for the drop-down box, after the Merchant names. That way, I could open the box and see right away who has the quickest delivery or the highest starting energy. Starting energy in particular would be telling me that they sell spellcaster units, so I might look at that Merchant to see if they have Ravens or whatnot.

If that can't be done, I would simplify the text displayed at the top of the Merchant menus. Rather than whatever it is now, I would have the following:

Something like that. As a Warlord, I shouldn't be forced to dig through clutter to find the information I want. It needs to be in plain sight. This change would also work out for Merchants, who can make a selling point on their delivery times or energy, or charge more for their units based on that. As of right now, I would never get the energy upgrades as a Merchant, because no Warlord would even notice that I've researched them.

INCOHERENT RANT COMPLETE

EDIT: Actually, one more thing. There really ought to be some organization for the units and upgrades on sale. Every time I look at Vet's menu, my head explodes. Protoss Ground Weapons could be on one page, and Protoss Ground Armor could be on another page, and AUUGUGHUGUHGHGFUGRGUTHG. I think having upgrades arranged by their max level would be best, since those would be the most frequently purchased, and they're also purchased in groups.

Wizerds N Mimes is in dire need of some major mechanical overhauling. Unfortunately for us, Ricky is hardset on certain concepts that are now necessary due to the manner of this map's metagame. As someone who not only plays W&M and wins very consistently, but also observes the replays and replays of high level stuff, and has dealt rather extensively with large-scale mods that operate on a similar level of "scale" to W&M in terms of economics and unit numbers, I really hope that Ricky at least considers some of the major things I am about to talk about.

MERCHANTS -

* Merchant Re-stocking

I don't play as a Merchant, but there's one thing I was absolutely floored hearing about. Merchanots cannot remove their stock and get a refund? I thought this was in the wc3 version, wasn't it? It should be in the sc2 version in either case. Merchants end up with a retarded amount of random stock that clutters the already insanely laggy and clumsy interface. Not to mention, this compounds the issue of having too many goddamn merchants and not enough customers to go around. If one merchant dumps all his cash into something the Warlords don't want, well he's fucked, because now he has no money and is dependent on someone buying his shit. He should be able to take stuff off the self for a loss (maybe gets 50-75% of the money back) so he has at least some chance of getting back into the game.

* Upgrades

I feel that merchants can get high levels (being 3+) of things like weapon and armor upgrades far, far too fast. Vet always goes upgrades, and he always wins by a tremendously stupid massive margin in which other merchants, even ones selling tons of shit regularly, cannot even compete with. This also harms the Warlords in that if they don't immediately buy these upgrades as soon as they appear, usually within 10 minutes or less it seems, they are fucked. I don't know how I managed with 6/3 vehicle weapons so long in that one game, but it probably has something to do with thors being retarded enough as it is.

These upgrades need to take the merchants much longer to get available. I usually see +3 up, or higher, before I even have an upgrade infrastructure ready just to get +1 vehicle/air upgrades.

* UI

The biggest issue I have with the UI currently is how freaking laggy it is to switch between pages. But B.net has an inherent 125ms latency on every action you do ON TOP of the existing net latency. Factor in people like Q and you get retarded update delays. Factor in 5-6 pages of upgrades and you're trying to find one damn thing, and you get an issue.

I think there should be a button to congergate a large number of stuff, namely thinking upgrades here, into slightly larger icon-only tables. You could probably condense 3 pages into 1 doing this. Hovering over the icon obviously tells you what it is. For multi-level upgrades, text can be displayed over them to show their available (Say you see the spines for zerg ranged, you might see a 5 listed over it to tell you the merchant has 5 levels available).

Even better, show your CURRENT upgrade level to compare to the availability. Your CURRENT upgrade can even be color coded (Red for less, Green for equal/greater). The idea here is to provide information that is immediately available as opposed to adding additional multitasking overhead onto the player. When I am managing 3 different battles on top of expanding and such, being forced to wait 4-5 seconds for each button update on top of reading all of the individual lines of text typically results in me losing a ton of shit.

For a quick and dirty hacktastic job, the current listing should show your current upgrade level in front of the upgrade.

[Icon][Your level/Merch level] [Name] [Ect]

Example -

3/5 {Dick} Zerg Missile Weapons 5 - ect...

The concise version would simply have an icon showing your level/merch level directly on top of the icon, color coded. Think how they are shown on the command card.

* Redundancy

There does not need to be 4 types of scourge, hellion, marine, whathave you. Two versions at the absolute maximum. The rest are redundant.

* Arrival time

Units should never arrive faster than 20 seconds after building them. Nerf this into the ground. I can have 30 bcs arrive a second after I push a button. This leads to spammy gameplay, like what Supreme Commander is like. Spammy gameplay is extremely bad. Floating 60k minerals/gas an hour in, plus instant arrival times, massively reduces the value of tactical and strategical choices made by the players, encourages hard countery gameplay, and leads to extreme difficulty in pushing and maintaining the map. This MUST be nerfed enormously.

* WARLORDS

W&M games are long. You won't make them faster without destroying the map. Suck it up and live with it. The question is, what are you going to do to make them equally interesting 2 hours in as they are 20 minutes in? By adding late-game options, high risk high reward options, and more dynamics. This comes with unit design, investments, and decision making.

You're going to need to add in units capable of Pushing.

The current Elite units are the Odin and the Omegalisk. Currently, the only unit with pushing power in the ENTIRE GAME is the Odin, specifically Barrage. That is because Barrage is currently the only thing in the game, except for hard counter-based interactions, that results in major swings in events in the game. Unfortunately, this is downplayed by several major elements that are native to this map's overarching mechanics.

- Tons of money and all units are extremely cheap means that individual actions like vaporizing 200 Thors with barrage or losing 4 Odins means virtually nothing economically.- Instant arrival time means "Oh, I lost 200 thors? Well, I got them again! Now what u guna do?"- Odins by themselves are incredibly frail and weak. The Leviathan in the campaign on brutal went down like a bitch to battlecruisers. Think about how a 2500 HP unit goes down to 40 6/6 vikings. Or, in this case, a 1500 Odin to a stack of pretty much anything 6/6. Unless the Odin gets off barrage, it dies immediately to almost any group of units capable of hitting it.

With even 3/3 upgrades, Starcraft 2 armies in melee melt in mere seconds. Now we have more damage, but health is not scaling. The damage values of sc2 are massively bloated compared to brood war, and it seems to me you're balancing the health values based on mathamatical calculations and not real-world design.

Real-world design is this.

By the time the first Odin appears in the map, everyone is filthy rich and has 6/6 upgrades. If they don't, then they're near-dead or going to die anyways. Best-case scenario, you've got 3 players, 2 with major map control and insane amounts of money, capable of instantly going 300/300 supply if something bad happens. The Odin is a one-trick pony, whose only redeeming capability in most situations is Barrage. You're investing 20 supply for Barrage and generally Barrage alone. The Odin gets next to no benefit from weapon upgrades. While his base damage is nice, a stack of cost-equal thors is far superior (and has Strike Cannons to stun anyways).

The Omegalisk is good when you're already in the lead. It's good because it can move while burrowed and has nice health regen. However, its health is still too low for it to stand against anything like thors or immortals up-front.

The Omegalisk has nothing that lets it immediately deal huge damage to an army. It's like a tank without a shield. It desperately needs its health doubled at the least, and maybe movespeed slightly reduced to compensate.

Supply becomes the biggest limiting factor in the game next to gas. a 20 supply unit better damn well be able to outperform fairly large squads of unmanaged non-elite units. You could leave these units as-is and add stuff that's even bigger and more expensive, but it won't solve the problem of these units being largely cost-ineffective due to how easily they die.

It is critical that units are balanced based on their POTENTIAL value. That is why tanks are so expensive - up front they do nothing, but they can siege and provide major long-ranged AoE damage/defense. Unfortunately tanks, costing 3 supply, are now too expensive for W&M.

Predators? Useless. Just make hellions. Cheaper and much more cost-effective.Diamondbacks? I thought they were 3 supply and thought "wow, much too expensive for how slow they are". Then mucky points out they are *4* fucking supply. In a game that is often air-dominant, they are awful.

Give it up on gimmick units like bikes and start investing into major projects unit-wise.

I've already suggested the siege carrier and I will suggest it again. A carrier with an activated ability that has a long charge-up, long range, and deals a large radius of splash damage with a maintained beam. The carrier would have immortal-styled shields to prevent easily sniping it inside an army. It would be on the same tier as the Odin/Omegalisk. This is to help push.

But the big thing I want to see is Floating Fortresses. Units with an excess of 20k health. For the Zerg, this would be the Leviathan.

* "Experimental" units

Supreme Commander has something for long end-game situations called Experimentals. Experimentsl are basically superunits. I don't mean Great Destroyer superunits, I mean units capable of changing the tide of the game and act as high risk high reward investments for the players. Since experimentals would come from merchants, and they would be extremely expensive, my idea to compensate for the cost on merchants, and to prevent the whole IN 20 SECONDS I REBUILT MY SUPERMAN is to make them heavily based on extremely costly, lengthy upgrades.

Floating Fortresses would basically be similar to Starbases from Sins of a Solar Empire. They have a limited number of "points" available. Each point can be invested into an upgrade - or to boost an existing upgrade. You can only make one point investment at a time, and this triggers a research. A research that takes around a minute or so to finish. The floating fortress itself, straight from the merchant, would not be very powerful. Something like a mothership. It's through the upgrades that they become powerful. They would also cost quite a bit of supply.

Each upgrade would cost a minimum of 3k/3k minerals/gas. Upgrades would do stuff like boost health/health regen, add turret-type weapons (avoiding major single-target damage as much as possible, instead adding individual independent weapons like the Omegalisk tentacles), and potentially some special abilities. I would avoid disables as much as possible, like Vortex, and instead focus on stuff like Guardian shield that provides bonuses to supporting units.

The Floating Fotress' concept is that in an end-game stalemate situation, which is almost always what W&M turns into, the fortress can be used as a high risk high reward element to make a push into an enemy player's base. It's intended to help drain the insane amount of money that otherwise gets spent on relentlessly spamming units from stray drop points and proloning the game, and provides the player an engine of war that can withstand lengthy battles and push into enemy defenses. Due to their slow movement speed, they wouldn't be able to be everywhere at once, and thus this places the element of decison-making into the player controlling them. Deciding where and how to use these units would then provide a major factor in potentially deciding the game and providng who is the best player as opposed to who has the most money to throw away into thors/wraiths/void rays.

While the floating fortress itself may not be the best idea, the overall mechanic I am trying to present here is still very important. In SC2 melee, BC's and Carriers are considered the endgame mechanics, but only because the maps are so tiny and mine out so fast. In W&M, neither of these elements are usually the deciding factor of the game because of insanely fast delivery speeds and the low mineral/gas cost of units.

You'd only be able to have one fortress at a time, and they would be unique to each race, like workers. So buying the floating fortress from a merchant as Zerg would, as an example, give you a Leviathan instead of a Purifier.

* Base units

I refer to all non-elite units as Base Units.

Some of these are going to need to be modified to be really viable. In vanilla sc2 there's a lot of units that, for the most part, are not very good. These include Hydralisks, whose off-creep maneuverability and survability are laughable at best. Luckily for hydras they get some nice range upgrades in W&M. But for other units, such as firebats, stalkers and reapers, there's just simply no point in getting them when there is so many more cost-effective solutions available.

Predators need more health or some other gimmick and cost too much gas/supply.Diamondbacks cost too much damn gas/supply.Over half of the combo units are completely redundant and come off to me as cheap "filler". Either make them meaningful or get rid of them. Every single unit needs something meaningful. "Combo Hellion" and "AA Hellion" are almost identicle. Get rid of strafing reapers and make phantom reapers a bit more viable. Only need normal scourge and phantom scourge. Bunker BC's need more health to be worth the cost.

- Carriers

Carriers need a bit of work to make them any useful in this map. Interceptors need immortal shields and perhaps more health. As it is, carriers in sc2 do not recharge the shields of their interceptors like in sc1. This means they die very, very easily and very fast. in W&M most units do enough damage to 1shot interceptors. This makes carriers worthless late-game. Making interceptors invulnerable will make carriers get auto-targeted and ultimately do nothing. So, they need major damage redunction to not be indestructible but be able to actually get in and so some damage in a big fight.

A suggestion for carriers is a deployment range upgrade from merchants. Probably quite high level.

I feel that Phoenixes also need something to compete with void rays, corsairs, and scouts. These are not cheap units.

Dark Swarm needs to be more visible. I could hardly see it ingame.

There's 69 more things I could rant about but this is a good place to start.wwSummary;

Elite units suck.Remove the insane amount of redundant combo units and make combo units actually meaningful.Nerf upgrade-based merchants.Massively nerf arrival time.Add big things for players to work towards in multi-hour games to help end them without forcefully fucking over the gameplay. Do something with the campaign units other than just throw them in and make half their stuff upgrades.

Mucky wrote:Wizards and Mimes: A Critical AnalysisWelp, Diamondbacks are terrible.

I discussed the details with you and I intend to apply the changes.

Combo units. Not a bad idea, but I've yet to see a unit that truly constitutes a "combo" [...] I don't know whether you're trying to be conservative or not, but those are just some ideas that come to mind.

I tend to prefer to conservative and to relatively keep it to the base unit. I could of course make lots of funky combos and such but I might want to avoid players having to remember all the detailed subtilities between. For example, remembering that that X combo units can counter air and ground units when the base one could only counter ground units.

As for a "combo", it's more based on multiple abilities initially at least. I admit that some of them got more passive buffs although I didn't want to slap Stim Packs or Charge to every goddamned combo unit.

Finally, trying to make unique things (that works, have no side effects, etc. etc.) in SC2 is a bitch and time-consuming. No doubt that ill somehow break the balance horribly too. Hence why I tend to go the passive route.

I also think it's kind of silly to have three tiers for each of these units.

I mostly did it so that Combo Merchants can have weaker but more accessible earlier combo units. For example, I could cut out all combo Scourges except the Phantom. Then you are still Combo Lv4 (out of lv5 needed for it) then you are out of luck (unless you make scourges that a rival C&F got benefits on). Now apply this to most combo units.

Yes, the latest one will essentially just be the one that will be sold in end-game. Kind of inevitable without major changes that I probably will screw up horribly if I don't have a solid detailed plan from A to Z.

That's bad, particularly when someone does sell them and then they become a permanently gray item on the menu. [...] ; if it's not being used, it's just cluttering the interface.

Yes, I know it's a current problem although the bigger problem with the potencial solution is removing it when it hits 0 but yet someone accidently buy the next row of units. Currently, the closest solution I thought is removing them when no warlord (while ignoring merchants) is looking at the list to avoid accidents. Althought, one side effect I have to consider if the merchant is trying to modify one of said grey items' prices.

I am still unsure about the "internal" details on how to prevent said side issues for changing prices.

The interface. Icons and the Next/Previous Page tabs are great additions, although there's a few other things you could do. Apparently there's upgrades to increase the starting energy of spellcaster units, and there's a display for its level on the merchant's menu, although it's really hard to notice. This, along with delivery times, should be made more visible to Warlords. If possible, I suggest placing it in the tooltips for the drop-down box, after the Merchant names. That way, I could open the box and see right away who has the quickest delivery or the highest starting energy. Starting energy in particular would be telling me that they sell spellcaster units, so I might look at that Merchant to see if they have Ravens or whatnot.

An annoying thing about dropbox menus is that the displayed length is the maximum of text it will be shown even in the selection case. Finally, no multi-rows of text.

So far, the closest I might want to do about it in the short term would be to display like "20-5C&F 70% EN Ricky_Honejasi" and try to enlarge that pulldown box.

If that can't be done, I would simplify the text displayed at the top of the Merchant menus. Rather than whatever it is now, I would have the following:

Initially, I thought of that in the first versions of W&M but was afraid people would think it takes too much space for "nothing" (when there could be an icon with the wanted detailed tooltip). Now with the addition of the newest buttons, I probably have no space left to spare. Ill check what I can do about it although.

EDIT: Actually, one more thing. There really ought to be some organization for the units and upgrades on sale. Every time I look at Vet's menu, my head explodes. Protoss Ground Weapons could be on one page, and Protoss Ground Armor could be on another page, and AUUGUGHUGUHGHGFUGRGUTHG. I think having upgrades arranged by their max level would be best, since those would be the most frequently purchased, and they're also purchased in groups.

I have thought about allowing merchants to organize their rows as a solution. Although, still hesiting (either for my solution or yours) for the same reasons as for automaticly eliminating rows with 0 quantity : people can accidently b uy something else due to row swifting.

Only thing extra I thought right now might to enforce some anti-row clicking of any row that got shifted for some time.

Other

Yes, I am aware that you guys are annoyed at many aspects of W&M but I tend to be the kind of guy that have to be sure at the deepest of my soul about any major changes (as in even down to the triggering details).

Usually, if I try a half-attempt (lack of planning, motivation, etc.), I will usually fail and even much more likely to not even attempt it again. It's as simple as that.

Thus, I tend to wait until I am truly ready to do it, test it and so on even if I take forever to actually attempt it and do it.

I don't play as a Merchant, but there's one thing I was absolutely floored hearing about. Merchanots cannot remove their stock and get a refund?

Well, I didn't bother for some main reasons :1) I added the "Borrow resources" system on the HQ where you can get free resources in exchange of a profit penalty.2) This extra functionality would probably imply removing removing the line which there are some issues due to reasons already mentioned in my response to Mucky's.

For other details, I don't think I added it in the wc3 version or if I did, it was barely used in the grand scheme of things.

As for merchants getting the wrong thing and being fucked, it's a reality. Then again, as a merchant, you have to avoid that situation in the first place (rather than dumbly create lots of stuff and hope it sells).

As a merchant myself, it happened often that I asked what people wanted and either they don't answer or much worse have a mindset of "You are supposed to know dumbass". I am not a mind reader and worse your gaming plans can change dramatically from one minute to another (ex : from going mass hellions to mass wraiths).

Finally, ill consider at least a version where you sell your stuff at 50% immediately but no promise about removing the lines. Probably via the modifying price dialog.

* Upgrades

I feel that merchants can get high levels (being 3+) of things like weapon and armor upgrades far, far too fast. Vet always goes upgrades, and he always wins by a tremendously stupid massive margin in which other merchants, even ones selling tons of shit regularly, cannot even compete with.

In theory if a merchant REALLY want all upgrades asap, they can build multiple research buildings of the same type then salvage them when they no longer need them at all.

In addition, the Advanced Research gives from +20% Chrono Boost (Lv1) to +100% Chrono Boost (Lv5)to all research buildings except the HQ. Thus Vet combining this and multiple research buildings can get them very very fast.

Also, researches now have a Auto-Re-research similar to the auto-retrain for units but for multi-level researches making no time loss due to forgetting X research.

Although, those research buildings are available even without any Basic Merchant techs in (basically the 2 levels that lasts 5 minutes before even you can go C&F, Combo, etc.).

Ultimately, other than slapping some Basic Merchant Lv1 (at worst Lv2) pre-requiste on the research buildings, increasing the incremental time per level or perphas lowering the Chrono Boost benefit, I don't see how I can change things without handicapping research more than anything.

Especially that if a merchant is dead serious to get lots of researches (like another could be serious by making 12 barracks to get 200+ marines in the X first minutes), he would get them fast regardless.

Other than that, perhaps forcing Adv.Researches to get Lv3 for Lv5 weapons/armor and Lv5 for Lv6 weapons/armor.

* UI[...]You could probably condense 3 pages into 1 doing this. Hovering over the icon obviously tells you what it is. For multi-level upgrades, text can be displayed over them to show their available (Say you see the spines for zerg ranged, you might see a 5 listed over it to tell you the merchant has 5 levels available).

Even better, show your CURRENT upgrade level to compare to the availability. Your CURRENT upgrade can even be color coded (Red for less, Green for equal/greater). The idea here is to provide information that is immediately available as opposed to adding additional multitasking overhead onto the player. When I am managing 3 different battles on top of expanding and such, being forced to wait 4-5 seconds for each button update on top of reading all of the individual lines of text typically results in me losing a ton of shit.

For a quick and dirty hacktastic job, the current listing should show your current upgrade level in front of the upgrade.

[Icon][Your level/Merch level] [Name] [Ect]

Example -

3/5 {Dick} Zerg Missile Weapons 5 - ect...

The concise version would simply have an icon showing your level/merch level directly on top of the icon, color coded. Think how they are shown on the command card.

While I believe it could reasonably fit 2 pages into 1. I don't see how for 3 pages without just showing icons and not showing critical information (unit name especially for combo + % of price) that I do consider critical to be in plain sight. The other details would be showing the quantity for units on bottom-right of icons or a "LvX/Y" for researches.

I admit to be still hesitant. However. at the same icon due to managing to find how to show unit icons on the dialogs, I am actually considerably much closer to jump to any interface changes. Although with my current plans so far, it would keep the page system and just show the icons/critical info on the whole current page. Closest I could change it without screwing everything in terms of my current triggers.

Now for researches, the bigger issue might be that while the lines get grayed out if the merchants has no unit left, it doesn't gray out for researches that you already have thus forcing the player to check all lines just "in case".

Btw the current dialogs DOES show if you already have the research but I admit the problem is it's in total opposite sides of the dialog. For example, it shows "Lv4" on the radical left for the # of levels that merchant while on the the racial right, it says which level you have or "Have" if you got all levels. Fortunately, I could probably put "LvX/Y" on the left to simplify matters at the bare minimum.

* Redundancy

There does not need to be 4 types of scourge, hellion, marine, whathave you. Two versions at the absolute maximum. The rest are redundant.

While they might feel redundant purely on a Warlord's view, it adds lower and mid-tiers for Combo merchants that otherwise just lacking that Combo level or two can screw them a lot in sales until they reach the level. Essentially told the reasons in my response to Mucky's.

* Arrival time

Units should never arrive faster than 20 seconds after building them. Nerf this into the ground. I can have 30 bcs arrive a second after I push a button. This leads to spammy gameplay, like what Supreme Commander is like. Spammy gameplay is extremely bad. Floating 60k minerals/gas an hour in, plus instant arrival times, massively reduces the value of tactical and strategical choices made by the players, encourages hard countery gameplay, and leads to extreme difficulty in pushing and maintaining the map. This MUST be nerfed enormously.

In terms of getting too many resources, it's a hard situation. If I put it back to normal then merchants tend to lack $ when nobody buys stuff. From our experience so far, more money allows at least the better players to kill off the lesser players and actually go somewhere game-wise.

For spammy gameplay, C&F does favors this type of gameplay and have no objection for spammy gameplay (one player style prefer spammy, another prefer "heroes", etc). However, I do agree that there is the difference between spammy gameplay and retarded spammy gameplay.

Normally, a fully-leveled C&F can reach 36-20 C&F of delay with Lv5 C&F and Lv3 Improved Training. Thus, it means 16 for standard units as things stand. However, the retardness is when a Adv.Merchant also have C&F and can reach 21-20 C&F for instant sends.

Thus, I agree to make a lower cap of 16 (base and C&F changes combined) to keep C&F Merchant as it is right now but preventing an Adv.Merchant to make it retarded in long games. At best, such tactic would make him have 21 - 5 C&F (keeping most Improved Training in favor of C&F that are just for standard units) instead of 21 - 20 C&F.

* WARLORDS

W&M games are long. You won't make them faster without destroying the map. Suck it up and live with it. The question is, what are you going to do to make them equally interesting 2 hours in as they are 20 minutes in? By adding late-game options, high risk high reward options, and more dynamics. This comes with unit design, investments, and decision making.

The SC2 Editor takes forever to make interesting things. Hence why there are so few Elite units already. They take quite a lot of time in terms of trying to make them unique and ACTUALLY making them work the way I want them regardless if it's ability-wise (abilities/behaviors/effects) or graphical-wise (actors).

Remember the Geobinder I added? Took 4-5 hours just for that and I lost about 1 hours and a half trying to get something in but couldn't down the road (or without making lots of hackjobs that can turn against me some way).

You're going to need to add in units capable of Pushing.

Yeah, could add more of them. Still not sure at which without taking forever to make them or just being X base unit that is just 4x buffed.

The current Elite units are the Odin and the Omegalisk.

There are more that can be damn useful but I know that you tend to greatly prefer super heroes.

It might be ridiculous however I rather prefer that you have too much money than not enough. When I played as a warlord, I do remember spending my "infinite" money into nothingness quite often.

- Odins by themselves are incredibly frail and weak. The Leviathan in the campaign on brutal went down like a bitch to battlecruisers. Think about how a 2500 HP unit goes down to 40 6/6 vikings. Or, in this case, a 1500 Odin to a stack of pretty much anything 6/6. Unless the Odin gets off barrage, it dies immediately to almost any group of units capable of hitting it.

Before the Odin's Barrage was overpowered speed-wise and now it's too slow. :p

Anyway, Ill actually buff the higher end of Elite units while increase their mineral cost (not gas) somewhat. However, not as much you would want. My current ideas would be to give +500 HP to Odins but increasing their mineral cost by 250. Probably the same for Omegalisks.

With even 3/3 upgrades, Starcraft 2 armies in melee melt in mere seconds. Now we have more damage, but health is not scaling. The damage values of sc2 are massively bloated compared to brood war, and it seems to me you're balancing the health values based on mathamatical calculations and not real-world design.

Perhaps although then again if I have to make it on real-world design, I would probably have to remake all 3 races to make them "right" (especially to your ideology) and other endless time-consuming things.

The Odin gets next to no benefit from weapon upgrades. While his base damage is nice, a stack of cost-equal thors is far superior (and has Strike Cannons to stun anyways).

For Odins, I believe +6 per level to their main guns and their main guns shots twice. Aka with 6 weapon upgrades, it's (6*2)*6 = +72 damage total. Can't say it's shit and I am not mentioning it's bonus vs structures.

The Omegalisk is good when you're already in the lead. It's good because it can move while burrowed and has nice health regen. However, its health is still too low for it to stand against anything like thors or immortals up-front.

Ironically, I expected more players to pre-burrow their Omegalisks to make sneak attacks into their bases that can be royally devastating than plain sending them in the open. Anyway, I do have plans to increase their HP and we will see after that.

Supply becomes the biggest limiting factor in the game next to gas. a 20 supply unit better damn well be able to outperform fairly large squads of unmanaged non-elite units. You could leave these units as-is and add stuff that's even bigger and more expensive, but it won't solve the problem of these units being largely cost-ineffective due to how easily they die.

While it would be nice to make Elite units ultra-powerful, it's ultimately making everything else other than Odins and Omegalisks useless. I pretty much have the ideology of allowing everything to win over anything else.

As for supply, I prefer keep the normal limit of 300 (while some would prefer 200). Blame SC2 designers for not having better code for pathfinding and such which kills the CPU. However, I would have been fine to pump it to 400 as the normal limit.

Predators? Useless. Just make hellions. Cheaper and much more cost-effective.Diamondbacks? I thought they were 3 supply and thought "wow, much too expensive for how slow they are". Then mucky points out they are *4* fucking supply. In a game that is often air-dominant, they are awful.

For diamondbacks, I already got the new stats and agreed by Mucky.

For Predators, Mucky suggested to make them anti-armored while having a Light attribute which personally I like and is pretty the best possibility I see to modify them into.

Give it up on gimmick units like bikes and start investing into major projects unit-wise.

Bikes can be damn useful especially the added "Load All" ability into them. Unfortunately, I guess ill have to play Warlord to demonstrate for the best or worse.

Also major projects takes a LOT of time. Otherwise I would have more Elite units by now since they are the most lacking.

I've already suggested the siege carrier and I will suggest it again. A carrier with an activated ability that has a long charge-up, long range, and deals a large radius of splash damage with a maintained beam. The carrier would have immortal-styled shields to prevent easily sniping it inside an army. It would be on the same tier as the Odin/Omegalisk. This is to help push.

Tried before and had issues. I had to learn from EVWeb just how to set the freaking beam actor stuff that always go wrong when duplicating units. Still have issues with the splash that can deal double or triple damage to bigger units (ex : Odin) that are in the way.

But the big thing I want to see is Floating Fortresses. Units with an excess of 20k health. For the Zerg, this would be the Leviathan.

I am afraid you won't see such high health values. At least not until I add some kind of level 6 to every merchant which will take a VERY LONG time with all the demanded things around + other plans.

At best, I only see 3-5k health units. 20k is way too easy to abuse to death by any player that knows to play their cards right (ex : heal, repair, pull it back at the right moments, etc.)

* "Experimental" units

Supreme Commander has something for long end-game situations called Experimentals. Experimentsl are basically superunits. I don't mean Great Destroyer superunits, I mean units capable of changing the tide of the game and act as high risk high reward investments for the players.

Unfortunately, that's the idea I am the most opposed in all of your suggested ideas. While superunits can be fun, essentially the only logical merchant for them would be the Elite merchant (thus C&F and Adv. Merchant are useless) unless I somehow allow them for Warlords directly (which kills a lot of finance for Merchants).

You say it's not Great Destroyer super units but I am afraid you always hope for that in the end. :p

I know you REALLY like superunits and such but I really don't see how I can add them without the best players just abusing them royally until the very end of the world. Ultimately, I can say FU to all other units (your racial or merchants'), get 6+ bases just for money if everyone else is too busy with rivals, mass upgrade their researches and own any specific player even if they buy lots of Odins, get 150 vikings and so on.

The Floating Fotress' concept is that in an end-game stalemate situation, which is almost always what W&M turns into [...]

I am really curious what you consider a stalemate. To me, it does seems it's not that bad until you consider a stalemate anything that goes beyond 5 minutes of conflict between two players or something (as in the enemy player must die in my first attack(s) or it's a "stalemate".)

While the floating fortress itself may not be the best idea, the overall mechanic I am trying to present here is still very important. In SC2 melee, BC's and Carriers are considered the endgame mechanics, but only because the maps are so tiny and mine out so fast. In W&M, neither of these elements are usually the deciding factor of the game because of insanely fast delivery speeds and the low mineral/gas cost of units.

You'd only be able to have one fortress at a time, and they would be unique to each race, like workers. So buying the floating fortress from a merchant as Zerg would, as an example, give you a Leviathan instead of a Purifier

You would see me adding more pushing Elite units sooner than adding Experiments since it ultimately boils down to that in honesty.

* Base units

I refer to all non-elite units as Base Units.

Some of these are going to need to be modified to be really viable. In vanilla sc2 there's a lot of units that, for the most part, are not very good. These include Hydralisks, whose off-creep maneuverability and survability are laughable at best. Luckily for hydras they get some nice range upgrades in W&M. But for other units, such as firebats, stalkers and reapers, there's just simply no point in getting them when there is so many more cost-effective solutions available.

Firebats already got a 3 base armor and their Adv. R allows a +2 armor thus with +6 armor of normal armor upgrades, they can reach 11 armor total. Perphas the only thing I could do extra might be to add more AoE fire splash.

Stalkers, it's kind of a lost hope without scrapping Dragoons in. There is a Adv.r for 12 blink range in total.

For Reapers, I could reduce their gas cost if you really want to make them "viable" indeed. :p

For Hydralisks, they got a +0.5 movement additional upgrade on top of their normal +1 range. Their Adv. R is ignoring half armor (instead of a second +1 range).

Zerglings got their attack speed researched buffed from +20% to +35%. It even affect combo units.

Over half of the combo units are completely redundant and come off to me as cheap "filler".

As previously mentioned, removing the "redundant" will screw over underleveled Combo merchants. My current plan is to further reduce their base prices to even closer to the normal units' prices.

- Carriers

Short of giving some base constant shield regeneration (ex : 1 shield/sec with no delay), I have zero intention to modify the carrier.

A suggestion for carriers is a deployment range upgrade from merchants. Probably quite high level

Already gave a 1/2 construction rate Adv. Research for interceptors. So unless I decide to scrap that research into such deployment range (probably just +1 range), nope.

I feel that Phoenixes also need something to compete with void rays, corsairs, and scouts. These are not cheap units.

Ricky_Honejasi wrote:I tend to prefer to conservative and to relatively keep it to the base unit. I could of course make lots of funky combos and such but I might want to avoid players having to remember all the detailed subtilities between. For example, remembering that that X combo units can counter air and ground units when the base one could only counter ground units.

Isn't that what the unit names are for? Everyone knows AA Hellions can attack air because they're called AA Hellions. And everyone knows Phantom Scourges are perma-cloaked because they're called Phantom Scourges.

I don't see how things like new attacks would be more difficult to comprehend when Warlords would have that information right on the unit. Things like movement speed and AoE numbers, increased stats etc. are only displayed for Merchants in the tooltips, so that's information not available to the Warlord. I consider that to be more of the "detailed subtleties", whereas weapons and active abilities are more straightforward as far as comprehending the differences from the base unit.

Remember that unit names should assist in communicating the role of Combo units to the Warlords. Example: A unit named "Marauder Bat" would suggest a unit that uses the Marauder's attack for long-range and the Firebat's attack for short-range.

Bottom line: If the combo unit isn't different enough from the base unit, there is no incentive to buy it over the base unit.

Finally, trying to make unique things (that works, have no side effects, etc. etc.) in SC2 is a bitch and time-consuming. No doubt that ill somehow break the balance horribly too. Hence why I tend to go the passive route.

You worry way, way too much about the possibility of new additions breaking the balance of the map. I agree that balance is important, but not to the point that you sabotage any possibility for the map to progress. You can't ever have a perfectly balanced unit the first time, because numbers alone won't to tell you how things will play out. Even in the worst case, a gamebreaking bug hasn't managed to cause the game to become unplayable... just goofy. But the map is goofy anyhow, so it's not like you could make the game terrible and not enjoyable by adding new units.

While I understand that it's your map and it's your choice whether or not you want to do anything with it, I view being conservative about new additions as a hurdle that you should make an effort to get over.

I mostly did it so that Combo Merchants can have weaker but more accessible earlier combo units. For example, I could cut out all combo Scourges except the Phantom. Then you are still Combo Lv4 (out of lv5 needed for it) then you are out of luck (unless you make scourges that a rival C&F got benefits on). Now apply this to most combo units.

Yes, the latest one will essentially just be the one that will be sold in end-game. Kind of inevitable without major changes that I probably will screw up horribly if I don't have a solid detailed plan from A to Z.

From my experiences as a merchant, the intermediate combo units would never really sell at all. But as soon as I reached, say, the final version of Carriers, they would sell like hot cakes. To me, the reason for this is the intermediate combo units are considered "incomplete" units. A Warlord doesn't want to spend money on a unit that's missing something from the final version. The exception in this case would be some dire need to counter a specific army flying around at the moment, so Doom Scourges tend to be successful here. In all other cases, it's better for the Merchant to wait until they have the "complete" Combo units to start selling. Since you yourself have started doing this, it really seals the deal that the intermediate tiers have no purpose.

That's just the issue, though. The main problem is that there simply aren't enough Combo units to fill in for all five levels. This goes back to my point above about being conservative.

As a merchant myself, it happened often that I asked what people wanted and either they don't answer or much worse have a mindset of "You are supposed to know dumbass". I am not a mind reader and worse your gaming plans can change dramatically from one minute to another (ex : from going mass hellions to mass wraiths).

If Warlords don't answer, it's either because they're focused on microing a battle while managing 6+ bases or they've tuned chat out completely because it's annoying and distracting (especially when you have people like Bishotron or SK saying "derp you should build everywhere" well NO SHIT, WHAT DO YOU THINK I'M TRYING TO DO). The burden of multitasking is actually quite enormous in late-game, so even getting a single-word reply would be a miracle.

You can't be a mind reader, but if you're getting replies like "build something actually useful" or "you're supposed to know", that means you're not anticipating the needs of the players. Everyone who plays Merchant has been guilty of this somewhat; a Warlord's base could be under attack by a fleet of Battlecruisers and someone would be spamming chat with "SELLING ZERGLINGS/BANSHEES/WHATEVER". Meanwhile, the Merchant who pays attention to what's going on will stock Vikings ahead of time, and he'll be the one to get all of the buyers. You're not just playing as a Merchant, you're observing a melee game.

Ultimately, other than slapping some Basic Merchant Lv1 (at worst Lv2) pre-requiste on the research buildings, increasing the incremental time per level or perphas lowering the Chrono Boost benefit, I don't see how I can change things without handicapping research more than anything.

Other than that, perhaps forcing Adv.Researches to get Lv3 for Lv5 weapons/armor and Lv5 for Lv6 weapons/armor.

The Adv. Research Merchant does need to be nerfed. Not just considering that Vet always wins by a huge margin on profit score, but also because of the effect high-level upgrades have on the game. You seem to underestimate its effect... but we had a game not too long ago which demonstrated how incredibly profound it is for level 6+ upgrades to show up so quickly in the game. I'm talking about the game where Vet got 6/6 Protoss upgrades while not selling the equivalent upgrades for Terran. Terran units became useless despite still being 3/3, and a situation like that essentially forces everyone playing to switch to Protoss units because they are the only ones with competitive upgrades.

Adv. Research needs to lose Chrono Boost entirely, the weapon/armor upgrades need to be split into levels 1/3/5, and research times need to be increased. Level 4+ upgrades should not show up until at least 20 minutes into the game. It takes about that long for a Warlord to set up its infrastructure and spend the time it takes to upgrade to 3/3. Currently, 20 minutes is when 6/6 shows up. That's ridiculous. Warlords can't keep up with upgrades even for its own race.

Whatever handicap you can come up with for Adv. Research Merchants, they deserve it. They are the easiest merchant to play (because you cannot possibly go wrong with weapons/armor and improved mining/gas), and the upgrades they sell have a huge effect on the game.

For spammy gameplay, C&F does favors this type of gameplay and have no objection for spammy gameplay (one player style prefer spammy, another prefer "heroes", etc). However, I do agree that there is the difference between spammy gameplay and retarded spammy gameplay.

If there is a difference between spammy gameplay and retarded spammy gameplay, I'm not aware of it.

tl;dr:

Nerf arrival times as Mesk said.OR

Set individual arrival times.

Increase times for Adv. Research upgrades.

If you're serious about fleshing out the Combo and Elite Merchant trees, I have some ideas floating around that (hopefully) would be easy to implement.

Quit worrying about upsetting the balance of the map when its metagame has been stagnant for months.

My two cents, not meant to be a game changer for you Ricky, but my biggest concern is the UI.

I find myself disinterested in even bothering to look up combo units or upgrades because of so many clicks to get there. I'm even hesitate to scroll past the first player that shows up or to Page 2 of their items. Personally instead of dividing pages per player, I'd divide them per unit tier or race and list all merchants and prices there.

I guess my biggest concern is having to spent so long scrolling through different merchants for pricing when the technology is there to have them all in my face at once. Even as a merchant is bugs me to not realize Ricky has set his bloody overlords to 100 possibly ten minutes ago because I didn't scroll through the five other merchants I'm up against.

You worry way, way too much about the possibility of new additions breaking the balance of the map. I agree that balance is important, but not to the point that you sabotage any possibility for the map to progress. You can't ever have a perfectly balanced unit the first time, because numbers alone won't to tell you how things will play out. Even in the worst case, a gamebreaking bug hasn't managed to cause the game to become unplayable... just goofy. But the map is goofy anyhow, so it's not like you could make the game terrible and not enjoyable by adding new units.

Pfff, so it's that bad huh? I care too much about balance? Well, I guess ill try making some retarded combo units at this rate since it seems I got "nothing to lose" in that regard. :p

The Adv. Research Merchant does need to be nerfed. Not just considering that Vet always wins by a huge margin on profit score, but also because of the effect high-level upgrades have on the game. You seem to underestimate its effect... but we had a game not too long ago which demonstrated how incredibly profound it is for level 6+ upgrades to show up so quickly in the game. I'm talking about the game where Vet got 6/6 Protoss upgrades while not selling the equivalent upgrades for Terran. Terran units became useless despite still being 3/3, and a situation like that essentially forces everyone playing to switch to Protoss units because they are the only ones with competitive upgrades.

Well, I did consider 1/3/5 or even 2/4/5 requirements for the levels but I didn't change them yet.

Since this upcoming FFS is rather too close for new tested changes, closest ill do is temporaly put 5% (instead of 20%) Chrono Boost per level for the Adv.Research for this upcoming FFS. Perphas some +15 time incremental increases per upgrade level.

I find myself disinterested in even bothering to look up combo units or upgrades because of so many clicks to get there.

Sorry Lav but if you aren't interested to check at least a bit further, you won't find things. Period.

To make it like you would want requires me to twist around too many triggers even if I would actually bothered to do it. I would rather change to Mesk's UI suggestions for units/researches (which with the addition of unit icons, I am much closer to such change).

Alright, so, after watching the replay of last week's game, I'm convinced Thors need a nerf. Their damage scales retardedly high (60x2) after 6 upgrades. A simple way to nerf them would be to keep its current damage for light armor only, and 50% damage for all other armor types. Thors won't be useless against units like Marines/Zerglings/Hydras, but they won't absolutely shred armored units. Besides that, Terran has a ton of anti-armored options.

I wonder if nerfing Thors is really the answer, though. The main problem with 6/6 upgrades is that certain units will have their damage scale beyond what armor upgrades can keep up with. This includes units like Thors, Tanks, Dragoons, Immortals, Ultralisks, Marauders... basically any unit that receives +2 damage or more per upgrade. But increasing the amount of armor per upgrade can create a similar problem, where units that only receive +1 damage will get fucked by massive armor amounts.

My suggestion would be to create a line-up of upgrades for extra health. This can either be available to Warlords at the Armory/Forge/etc. up to level 3 with Adv. Reseach Merchants having up to 6, or only Merchants being able to sell it. I'm not sure what values you would want for them yet. Maybe 10% of base health?

I'm gonna try to keep this post short, so I'll just list suggestions with no explanation (lol)

Add a delivery time for upgrades/research from Merchants.

Minimum of 50% pricing for units.

Scrap the special upgrade for Void Rays, they're strong enough without it.

Undo the gas cost increase for Ravens. With the current trend being "LOL THOR WARS" and "SUDDENLY, VOID RAYS", Ravens aren't that strong anymore.

Perhaps although I notice you guys tend to stay too much with the same units over and over. I can understand you want victory (thus preferring to stick with what worked) but sometimes, it might be worth it to try some different units.

For example, against Thors, the newly buffed Diamondbacks should own them now. They use 2 supply vs the Thor's 6 and at equal supply value, they are more or less the gas cost while Diamondbacks would deal vaguely 120 base DPS while a thor would deal 60 DPS.

On top of it, you can probably add some Predators into the counter mix that their Lightning Field now cause 50% AoE slow movement and 50% AoE attack speed.

As Zerg, perphas going more Swarm Guardians or Moustache Lords could do it. In addition, Dark Swarm + Zerglings might do it. As protoss, the never-seen Reavers could probably do a lot in high enough quantity (AoE 100 + 15 vs light per scarab).

The main problem with 6/6 upgrades is that certain units will have their damage scale beyond what armor upgrades can keep up with.

Well, that's always the tricky part with higher upgrades despite that I even chopped levels 7-8 out of the picture.

Closest I see would be your global health/shields upgrades. It might potentially make armies "melt" less quickly. Although, I wonder if it will just make games longer in the end. Ill have to think about it.

Add a delivery time for upgrades/research from Merchants.

Don't know, it feel it might more or less unnecessary. Especially when it feels more like a suggestion to compensate for not putting Lv4-6 upgrades to 1/3/5 already (which ill do eventually, probably for next FFS).

Minimum of 50% pricing for units.

I really don't see why you add this suggestion. If a merchant wants to screw themselves financially, they can. Even if all merchants decide to go 0% for their wares, "weak" merchants never get bought or it's just their final nail in the coffin. For the best one, it might just not change much.

Ultimately, I intend to put a "out of nowhere sell at 50%" for any unit in the price dialog.

Scrap the special upgrade for Void Rays, they're strong enough without it.

Maybe, maybe not. I admit the Charge special upgrade does help them. However, with the extra units added, there ARE counters to Voids.

Example : - Stimmed Marines (might not save you from big mass rays but damn it can save you a lot of gas on smaller scale cases) - More turrets/spore colonies/cannons (I even added some minor attack upgrades such as +1, +1.5 or +2/level this time) - Goliaths (Air anti-armored and 9 range with research) - Scouts (I essentially made them Light JUST to make them counters vs Rays) - Mutalisks + Devourers (Devourers have this -1 armor per attack with a lower cap of -5 stacked armor) - Scourges (Especially AoE combo ones) - Wraiths (Cloaked and can catch a lot of them off-guard without detection) - Dragoons (Enough damage, range, etc. to stand their ground)

Undo the gas cost increase for Ravens. With the current trend being "LOL THOR WARS" and "SUDDENLY, VOID RAYS", Ravens aren't that strong anymore.

Just because Ravens aren't the current trend that they should be unnerfed. Heck, gets enough Ravens and they counter Thors (Mass Missiles + PDD or PDD + other anti-ground air units) and Rays (Mass Missiles).

And at worst, +25 gas on a gamebreaking unit at 200 gas is just a cheap nerf in the grand scheme of things. I even considered putting them to 250 or 275 gas.

Ricky, you weren't obsing the last game as merchant and quite honestly, don't know what you are talking about.

My Thors were WRECKING EVERYTHING including Diamondbacks they ran into, upper tier units like Battlecruisers also melted in mere seconds and Brood Lords have far less health than they do. PDD will do absolute shit to Thors when each of them are shooting volleys of 4 missiles that also splash as soon as the PDD's run dry.

50% minimum price is needed when you have merchants like Vetreus that has such a colossal lead on everyone ruining whats left of the game because it comes down to whoever can click the buy button fast enough with free supply.

Making Void Rays lose their charge was one of the few counters they had, that upgrade makes them have zero downsides and also minimizes any disadvantage they to charging on low HP units. Static defenses are like paper vs a blow torch to Void Rays normally, with the upgrade they go from blow torch to a fucking sun.

I was rolling over everything Mesk and Mucky had until he had Void Rays himself to send against them after Vet set his prices to 0%. With a large number of them the only thing that will counter of them is mass corsairs or a dogpile of scourge that might get at them before dying at which point you are fucked to anything on the ground. HSM's are not going to catch them with Flux Vanes, the Ravens would get destroyed before they could even get into suicide range.

Perhaps although I notice you guys tend to stay too much with the same units over and over. I can understand you want victory (thus preferring to stick with what worked) but sometimes, it might be worth it to try some different units.

Watch games more closely and tell me why there aren't more units being used. They're either useless, too expensive, or not being made by merchants.

they are more or less the gas cost while Diamondbacks would deal vaguely 120 base DPS while a thor would deal 60 DPS.

What the hell makes you think a Diamondback does anywhere NEAR the damage of a thor? Thors attack faster, do more damage per hit (vs everything) AND attack twice in one attack. You do know Thors attack twice... right? Watch the replay of the last game and tell me how my diamondbacks did against hks' thors. Hint: they died terribly.

Diamondbacks don't do ANYWHERE NEAR 120DPS. Do you even know what DPS is? That's Damage Per Second. Diamondback DPS is more like 20.

On top of it, you can probably add some Predators into the counter mix that their Lightning Field now cause 50% AoE slow movement and 50% AoE attack speed.

Maybe, if a Thor didn't do 3/4 their life in one hit fully upgraded. So, I need a massive stack two units just to try to counter a stack of one unit.

As Zerg, perphas going more Swarm Guardians or Moustache Lords could do it. In addition, Dark Swarm + Zerglings might do it. As protoss, the never-seen Reavers could probably do a lot in high enough quantity (AoE 100 + 15 vs light per scarab).

Zerglings are an idea but all a Terran has to do to deal with those is a stack of AA hellions for dirt cheap off any given merchant. Reavers, not a chance in hell. Why do you even mention + 15 vs light? How does that have any value at all vs thors, exactly?

Although, I wonder if it will just make games longer in the end. Ill have to think about it.

You say this, and then you say...

Ultimately, I intend to put a "out of nowhere sell at 50%" for any unit in the price dialog.

THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MERCHANTS SCREWING THEMSELVES IT HAS TO DO WITH PLAYERS BUYING 300 SUPPLY OF UNITS FOR DIRT CHEAP!

there ARE counters to Voids.

Let's hear em.

- Stimmed Marines

Not a chance.

- More turrets/spore colonies/cannons

Re: Every game involving Void Rays involves extremely large numbers of defenses dying en masse with no Void Ray kills. Only PF's would be any good but 6/6 vrs still kill anything armored (all buildings) in seconds and slow PF attack speed means they get maybe 1-2 shots off. Every other structure does nothing. The 10% splash is insignificant against unupgraded air.

- Scouts (I essentially made them Light JUST to make them counters vs Rays)

Not likely.

- Mutalisks + Devourers (Devourers have this -1 armor per attack with a lower cap of -5 stacked armor)

Good thing that mutalisks can out-dps a maxed out void ray and have as much health as they do!

- Scourges (Especially AoE combo ones)

Scourge work because smart AI is OP.

- Wraiths (Cloaked and can catch a lot of them off-guard without detection)

Wraiths do significantly less damage than vikings, have less range, and will get eaten by maxed out rays regardless of armor type. The only saving grace is people being lazy with detection. Wraiths can't kill vrs fast enough before your base is gone anyways.

- Dragoons (Enough damage, range, etc. to stand their ground)

No chance at all. They are too big to get the localized DPS available to air units and don't do damage competitive to VR's. See the team game where dragoons fail to kill any vrs at all in tremendous numbers.

This statement leads me to believe you have absolutely no idea how powerful Thors are. Thors are the most effective unit against Ravens currently in the game except for maybe Odins. Each missile a Thor fires are individual, each absording PDD shots. Ravens are light. HSMissiles are shorter ranged than they were when I was abusing them. It takes 4 HSM to kill one thor. Splash is negated by large body size. Ravens have 200 mana. HSM costs 125, PDD 100. Thus it takes 4 ravens bare minimum to kill 1 thor, and expect losing half of them to a 6/6 thor if he sees you coming. Add more thors and you need exponentially more ravens. Once you have enough thors ravens are totally useless. See one of my earlier FPVOD's vs EVWeb/bishotron in which thors decimate ravens.

Ravens countered mass void rays until their range was fixed. Flux Veins very easily outruns raven missiles and wastes their mana. No one is going to eat missiles anymore.

And at worst, +25 gas on a gamebreaking unit at 200 gas is just a cheap nerf in the grand scheme of things. I even considered putting them to 250 or 275 gas.

A 'gamebreaking unit' is a unit that counters 90% of the units in the game and becomes exponentially more effective due to smart AI. Currently, only Thors and Scourge fit these attributes. Not Ravens.

If you aren't willing to put major time in this map you should stop putting major time into coming up with incorrect theorycrafting and use the replays/FPVOD's available to you to see how the game plays out instead of coming up with imaginary circumstances that never play out. That is not how balancing works. If you want more people to enjoy the map and harbor some vain hope of it becoming popular one day, be prepared to put time into it and actually listen to the players who have experience in playing the map and have some idea of what they're talking about. If not, abandon the map and stop wasting our time with false hopes. I am tired of this "I don't want to put work in the map" then just come up with bullshit meaningless excuses for backwards changes that your playerbase strongly disagrees with. Give up gimmicks and prepare yourself to make major changes to the way this map plays or give it up and stop wasting your time.

Do you want to know why I was so reluctant to put items into LoL? I told you why, but I'll tell you again. I wanted to make sure everything else was balanced first. Ravens were super strong early into W&M because they were using beta/campaign stats, including very high HSM range. Ravens are very slow, and PDD is only effective against certain units. Now you are talking about making them cost a metric fuckton of gas ON TOP of already having massively nerfed the effectiveness of HSM by reducing the range back to what it is. That is called overnerfing. There is a reason why you should avoid making huge sweeping changes like this, because it fucks up everything, especially when you are clearly uneducated in how the current metagame of your map is working. Judging by the fact every single time I see you as merchant saying BUY BIKES PUT MURLOC MARINES IN THEM for the longest time, your lack of economic sense is a byproduct of actually having no idea how the game even works to begin with.

W&M as I knew it originated as a wc3 map, in which certain concepts worked because armor and damage functioned completely differently than it does in sc2. As it was largely % based, having giant damage values on certain things didn't matter because damage in general was massively outclassed by %-based reduction. A wc3 mindset is fatal in current circumstances.

Currently, there are several units in sc2 that become incredibly strong unexpectedly due to the presence of smart AI (no overkill on instant attacks aka scourge/thors/marines) and pathing. Also, as air units cluster far more, "localized" dps now becomes an issue. Localized dps is the current damage being dealt in a region, and the ability to put damage into that region in return. The reason Thors are so powerful is because of the open nature of the map. Once Thors are in a fanned out mass, aka anywhere but a choke, there is a HUGE amount of damage being sent down-range at a very significant range of 7. Thors doing 45x2 damage unupgraded 1shot half the units in the game, and have a respectable firing rate. A wall of this kind of damage output with zero overkilling will MASSACRE anything on land that approaches it lacking major defensive mechanisms. This is why I pushed for immortal-styled shielding on things like the Omegalisk, so that they had pushing capability.

If these concepts still escape you, I'm sorry to say but you need to take our suggested changes at face value and at least TRY them before trying some crazy bullshit french theorycrafting. A test map is hugely different than our games, and we have already experienced 90% of the things you're talking about. These experiences are immortalized in my videos and in recorded replays. The fact you don't even know that thors attack twice is truly incredible. The fact you don't have an understanding of what DPS does and how it relates to balancing is fatal to the map at this state in time.

If you are serious about fixing this shit or want more details just ask me on AIM.

/edit

I also want to quickly throw out that no one else should be hosting games besides Ricky unless he tells them to. Last FFS was a fucking disaster. I don't even play other maps and it still pissed me off to get random join notifications from people I don't know or give two fucks about when they aren't running the event.